Apocalypse Now 3: Crusaders of The Cataclysm
by KeronianLibrary
Summary: Knowing that the mysterious tribe that laid siege to Keron and Pekopon would not stop at two failures, the human/keronian team head out to the home planet of their aggressors to execute a counter-attack. However they soon realize that the technology they possess is cripplingly inferior to that of their enemy. How will the K66 Platoon survive with the odds so stacked against them?
1. Scourge of the Universe

For all those who want to know how this all ends, here it is. Of course, if you're new, I personally think that you should go back and read the other Apocalypse Now stories that I've written since they all technically link together. If you don't feel like it, that's fine too. With a bit of patience, you can piece together the general gist of the last two parts if you're in a hurry.

**Chapter 1: Scourge of the Universe**

"The first thing we must ask ourselves is: 'why do we fight?'" Keroro paced importantly around the cramped cabin of the K66 transport vehicle giving nasty looks to anyone who spoke when he was speaking. He wore a pair of reflective sunglasses while a Keronian custom trench coat adorned the rest of his body. It was the shiny gold crown on his head with the engraved word "General" that was making the air inside the ship very cold and hostile, however.

"Just because he kills Dimentio singlehandedly doesn't give him the right to wear that obnoxious thing," Natsumi snarled, grinding her teeth in frustration. While Fuyuki tried to calm her down, Giroro's foot began to twitch annoyingly.

"Don't you usually clean your weapons when you're board, Corporal?" asked Tamama, desperate to make idle chatter to pass the time.

"You remember what happened the last time I cleaned weapons on a ship? PTSD, soldier, I'm sure you understand."

"Aren't you supposed to be the tough guy? Post traumatic stress disorder? Please!"

"Oh yeah…being blasted out of a ship and hurled toward a sun, then by a stroke of good fortune, landing safely on your home planet only to be beaten and chained. Just your normal day on the job," grunted Giroro and turned away in order to hide just how fractious he was becoming.

The cramped condition on the ship was beginning to get to everyone. Even Kururu, master of mischief, architect of annoyance, was feeling the strain of hours upon hours of immobility. He clicked away aimlessly on his computer and fiddled incessantly with his glasses. Kururu had recently acquired a fondness for the mindlessly simple yet satisfying style that classified games from Pekopon. In his opinion, blowing stuff up with C4 was a far cry more entertaining than the endless strategy simulators he was forced to undertake during his training years. Smiling to himself as he booted up yet another FPS, Kururu began to imagine the fun days he would enjoy once this whole mess was over.

Keroro's voice, now shrill from yelling, cut sharply through Kururu's daydreams, "The next thing we must ask ourselves is 'who do we fight?' Not fighting or cowardice is unbecoming of a soldier such as myself, but fighting the wrong peoples is just plain stupid!" he paused to take a swig of water from a canteen resting on the ground. "Intelligence! Intelligence is what we need and is what we sorely lack! Kururu! I know you aren't listening to me! Stop your idle play! Your comrades need YOU!"

Kururu shook his head with disgust. Even he was beginning to feel embarrassed at his superior's ostentatious display of pride and status. Choosing to blatantly ignore, Kururu racked up another kill streak with a derisive "ku ku ku".

Snarling with indignant rage, Keroro marched over and slammed shut the cover of Kururu's laptop. There was a pause in where everyone cringed backward in the fight that was about to ensue. However, instead of confronting, the Sergeant Major just lay back: "That's just like you, captain. Ruin my triple digit K/D, the one success this platoon has had in ages."

Rolling over, Kururu fell asleep. Natsumi and Giroro gave each other pointed looks. Unless the platoon could work together, nothing was going to get done. Snarling with frustration, Giroro heaved himself up and walked over to Keroro.

"Corporal!" screeched Keroro before Giroro had a chance to open his mouth, "Wake up your disrespectful comrade now!"

"First, take off that STUPID hat!" yelled Giroro, ripping the golden atrocity off his superior's head and throwing it into a corner of the ship, "You may be platoon leader, but you're light-years from being a General!" while Keroro pouted, Giroro walked over to the sleeping yellow form of the Sergeant Major and kicked him smartly in the back. With a scream, Kururu jumped up and flipped over his laptop resulting in a wince inspiring face plant.

"Kururu! Put that mind of yours to work figuring out what the heck we're up against. This planet we're going to, I need blueprints of their buildings and architectural layout. Tamama, check the navigation equipment to make sure we're still on course. Dororo, I want you to take a look at the prints when Kururu can get them to you. Plan the best route in and out."

While Giroro shouted commanding orders, Keroro stood still and pouted, arms swinging idly at his side. Finally, when he could stand it no longer, he yelled, "But what am I going to do?"

"You…" Giroro struggled to find a use for his leader, "You go sit there in the corner. Time-out."

While Keroro tearfully made his way to the time-out corner, Momoka and Fuyuki sat quietly in the corner. Thanks to the emergency medical pods on their ship, the multiple injuries the two had sustained were nothing more than painful memories now. While this would have been a good time to talk about their feelings for each other, the events of the previous day had left them mentally drained. Simple silence would be enough for now, Momoka lightly resting her head on her boyfriend's shoulder.

Thanks to Giroro's violent intervention, the ship was silent for the first time in hours. All that could be heard was the deep breathing of Dororo and Koyuki's meditation, the rhythmic clicking of Kururu's research and the faint sobs of Keroro from the corner. It put Aki into a good mood, and she began to imagine what an incredible manga could be made from the story she was living. As her mind wandered, Kururu suddenly began laughing, startling everyone in the ship.

"Lookie here! I finally found something on this mysterious tribe we're going up against!"

Keroro immediately jumped up and ran toward Kururu, grabbing him by the shoulders, "I knew you could do it!"

Kururu frowned, but allowed his leader to shake his limp body before continuing on. "You losers are probably wondering why I took so long to get the intel. I'm not kidding you when I say there is no word of these mofos anywhere on the intergalactic web. I've scoured shipping logs, radio broadcasts, everything!"

"What does that mean for us?"

"Whoever or whatever these entities are," sighed Kururu with an air of depression, "They don't want to be found and seem ridiculously self-sufficient. Since there are no shipping logs or even records of ships flying close to this planet, it looks as if they built the Apocalypse Vortex Climactic Weapon (the WMD they used to siege Pekopon) completely on their own, which actually worries me."

"With all the radiation signatures coming from this place," yelled Tamama, looking at the gages on the front of the ship, "You'd think that somebody would go investigate."

"Exactly," cried Kururu, throwing his hands in the air, "From the records I _can_ find, over a thousand ships have headed this way over the last decade and none have returned! We're dealing with some kind of planetary shield."

There was a stunned silence in which everybody tried to make sense of the Sergeant Major's revelation. Finally, Fuyuki spoke up, "We've all been to plenty of alien planets before. How come no other extraterrestrials have planetary shields?" his voice wasn't loud, but it reverberated all around the small cabin. There was another awkward silence, punctuated only by the beeping of gauges on the control panels in the front.

The lack of a smart-alecky Kururu response unnerved Dororo to the point of talking. As soon as the first syllable came out of his mouth, however, everyone jumped. He had been forgotten. Dororo felt his consciousness sliding as unbidden memories of his childhood rose from the depths of his corrupted psyche. Shaking his head sharply, Dororo pulled himself back into reality. The question had to be asked. "So, since none of us have heard of a 'planetary shield', am I to think this is unknown technology?"

The Sergeant Major turned around and, bent double, shuffled his way to the time-out corner. While the others watched him go surprised silence, his voice could be faintly heard lamenting, but edged with the poison of jealous rage.

"I thought I was the smartest…I thought I had the best technology…who do these losers think they are…I'll show them…ku ku ku…"

The group traded looks and silently agreed on a course of action. They had no idea what a planetary shield could do, or when they would run into it on their course to the unknown planet. Aki went with Tamama to man the controls and watch for any visible obstacles. Koyuki and Dororo sat in the corner and extended their consciousnesses through meditation in order to try and pinpoint the shield's location. Meanwhile, Fuyuki, Momoka, and Giroro took over at Kururu's laptop to try and find some answers.

As the minutes stretched into hours, beads of sweat rolled down the team's faces. Keroro discovered as he walked over to try and persuade Kururu to help, that the Sergeant Major was indeed researching fervently on a tablet. Keroro began helping Kururu transcribe the findings.

Save for quiet, occasional murmurs, the tick of the keyboard and the scribbling of a pencil on paper, the ship was quiet once again, but for a different reason. The humans didn't know what they were up against, and for the first time, neither did the keronians. It was that fear of the unknown that drove them to such a frantic ecstasy of concentration.

Their eyes were bloodshot, their hands had cramps. Sweat rolled down their faces even in the air conditioned interior. Knuckles white, teeth clenched, the time ticked on as their ship got ever nearer to the mysterious planet. Ever nearer.


	2. Alien Deep Fryer

**Chapter 2: Alien Deep Fryer**

The strangled cry to halt came sooner than anyone had expected. Tamama leapt lopsidedly from his resting place on the floor and slammed the emergency stop button. The crew grimaced as the ship came to a quick, grinding halt, sending anything not bolted down spiraling toward the front of the ship. Picking himself up off the floor, a shaken Fuyuki turned to Dororo: "What did you sense? How come we're stopping?"

The rest voiced similar opinions. This stretch of space looked like every other. "Sensors indicate that we've got about a thousand or so miles to go before we can see this planet through the window."

Keroro jumped up on a fallen shelf, "Screw the window! Kururu, use this ship's optic zoom to bring the planet into view. We should be close enough now."

"Way ahead of you captain. I activated the zoom on the main screen," yelled Kururu from under the pile of wires that had fallen on top of him, "I can't see anything from under these cursed things, but if you can't see the planet on the screen, then the shield is blocking my optics as well. Ku ku ku…"

"This is some shield!" Dororo exclaimed, startling the entire company, "Not only could it block our Sergeant Major's optics system, I can't extend my consciousness past this point. I can't be certain, but this race might have discovered a way to block thoughts."

Giroro was still not convinced. One look at Natsumi and they were on the same wavelength. Running to opposite corners of the ship, they punched in a short pin code and two doors slid open. Getting in, they activated the ship's turrets and opened fire into what appeared to be empty space.

The two energy bolts soared deep into the vacuum of space. The two watched closely as the bullets slowly disappeared from view. Exiting the turrets, they rejoined the mystified others. "How could bullets pass through where optics and thought fail?" asked Aki, trying to remember if any manga she had ever edited could provide a suitable answer. As if in defiant reply, the bolts fired not a minute past came back into view, soaring at more than double the speed toward the ship. As the Keronians stared in stiff shock, Aki grabbed the controls with lightning reflexes and pulled a sharp right, turning the ship nearly on its side. The two bolts missed by a hair.

After the crew had picked themselves up off the ground for the second time, (Kururu, tangled in the wires, had rolled kicking and screaming to the other side of the ship where he hit his head and passed out), they began to doubt the plausibility of their mission. While Aki splashed water on a bleary Sergeant Major, the humming of engines could suddenly be heard.

Tensing, Giroro assumed control of the turrets from the main deck and readied himself for battle. However, the ship radioed in a greeting and pledged that they came in peace. Breathing a sigh of relief, the Corporal recognized the crest on the ship to be one of a planet aligned with Keron. While the humans scrambled for cover, Giroro opened a live feed between the two ships. They had heard about the distress from Keron and asked if it had been resolved. With a nod and smile, Giroro assured them that it had. As it turned out, the ship had been ordered to investigate this patch of the galaxy due to unusually high radiation levels emanating from what was considered by some intergalactic cartographers to be empty space.

A thought passed through Giroro's head. It was a cruel and dangerous idea, but the only one that seemed to make sense at the time. Bending over the communications screen, he told the friendly ship that they were going to make a few repairs and then head back to Keron. He told them that they should continue on ahead.

With a jovial salutation, the ship signed off and powered up their engines; sailing quickly toward where the planetary shield was located. Fuyuki and the rest of the humans were concerned to why Giroro hadn't told them anything of the dangers ahead, but the Keronians all understood. This was the farthest from normal warfare as they could possibly get, so deception came easy.

As the allied ship gained speed, Giroro sneakily turned the engines on to 25% and began backing slowly away from the shield. He didn't know what the effect would be, whether the ship would be swallowed into a wormhole, be hit by an EMP, or just completely destroyed altogether, but he refused to risk his ship being hit by a rogue shockwave or the like.

Dororo, sitting cross-legged on the floor, concentrated with all his might, extending his consciousness until it smashed hard into the barrier. Easing up on his gritted teeth, he let his mind wash over the outer layer and felt for any weak spots. It came to no surprise when he could find none. Suddenly, he realized he could no longer feel the presence of the allied ship.

"It's passed the shield!" Dororo gasped, his head snapped up and he was drenched in sweat. For some reason, the act of moving through the shield unnerved Dororo to no end. As Koyuki laid him down on a sleeping cot and applied a cool towel, Dororo began to weep.

Seeing his teammate crying, ripped Keroro out of staring at the allied ship, slowly cruising farther and farther away. "Kururu! I need optics now!"

"Captain…are you high again? Ku ku ku…the optics can't see past the shield, remember?"

"I'm not talking about visual optics! Have you tried the ones that can see energy fields?"

Kururu choked on the curry he had been voraciously spooning into his mouth. Looking annoyed, he ran up to the control panel and tapped a few buttons, muttering: "I knew that."

Immediately, an intricate web of blue fibers stretched across the view screen. "We're looking at the shield," Kururu said dryly, pointing at the image with a curry-stained spoon, "By the looks of this bright blue color, it's running hot with energy."

As Kururu explained the different functions of his perfect energy mapping program, Natsumi squinted hard at the screen. "Wait…why is the color draining from the part right in front of us?"

Looking down, the team saw the blue color draining quickly from a small patch in the shield, the same place where the allied ship had gone through. "We're down to 20% power!" cried Kururu over the roar of the engines. Tamama was at the wheel and had initiated the boosters.

"HALT!" screamed Keroro, thinking his inferior had gone mad, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

"Captain trust me on this!" yelled Tamama back to his superior, "We only have this one window of opportunity!"

The noise became so great that everyone clamped their hands over their ears in a desperate attempt to maintain a bearable volume. As the boosters charged, the ship began to shake violently, prompting the humans to throw themselves onto the beds for support.

"Tamama," Kururu motioned with one hand, "The energy is recharging! Now!"

The crew felt themselves being thrown back and pressed into the wall for the second time that day as the ship shot forward leaving a trail of superheated air in its wake.

It wasn't long until they had put the planetary shield far behind them and everyone clambered to their feet as Tamama turned off the boosters for a long cool down. Dororo was still shaken and sweaty, but stood up and took a couple of steps toward the nearest window. The allied ship was now in sight, and Tamama cruised smoothly toward it.

As they got closer, it seemed like the ship had turned all their lights on, as piercing yellow pervaded all the windows.

It was fire.

Momoka could scarcely avoid screaming as they passed by the ship. Yellow flames leaped back and forth inside the ship, eating up the fine tuned equipment, supplies, and the oxygen in the cabin. As they watched, a crewman rushed jerkily toward the window and slammed into it while making the intergalactic sign language symbol for "help". As soon as he finished motioning, his hair caught on fire. Opening his mouth in a silent scream, he used a specialized cutter to slice through the window pane and leap out into space. His twisted, seared form exploded in the vacuum, sending mini droplets of blood splattering on Keroro's ship causing Momoka to fall back in disgust. Fuyuki bent down and held her hand silently.

There was a solemn silence as the ship's fire eventually burnt out. Even Kururu looked a bit disturbed, and for once, wasn't the first to speak.

"So what the hell was that?" roared Giroro, suddenly angry beyond reason, "The freakin' alien deep fryer? Keron doesn't even have records of this kind of technology and we're going up against it blind?"

As everyone looked around uncomfortably, Tamama grabbed the cool towel and put it on his face. Instantly, he ripped it off and threw it on the ground, sputtering, "It's really hot!"

Lost in the moment, the crew hadn't noticed how hot the cabin was becoming. In a panic, the allied ship's crewmember's burnt face still branded in his mind, Keroro jumped for the AC control and pushed it to 30 degrees. The relief was as instant as it was brief. In its effort to cool the rapidly increasing temperature, it overheated and shattered, sending a shards of metal flying toward Aki. Normally it wouldn't have done anything, but the temperature in the machine before it blew had made the shards white hot and they pierced her skin with ease. Falling to the ground, Aki held her back as a stream of steaming blood cascaded onto the floor.

Fuyuki yelled in fear for his mother and ran to her, but Momoka held on instinctively to his hand and he fell on his face. It began to sting as soon as his skin came in contact to the metal ground.

Kururu picked up his laptop and rushed for the escape pod, calling for everyone to follow him, but his computer's interior was already on fire and he dropped it with a yelp. The fragile escape pod short circuited and grew dim, rendering it useless.

The whole room wasn't on fire just yet, but the heat was unbearable. Slowly, each member of the team fell onto the ground, panting for air, dying for just one more cool breath.

Visions faded, and blissful darkness awaited.


	3. 20 Cooler

Sorry for slow updates…

**Chapter 3: 20% Cooler  
**

Fuyuki suddenly snapped back to consciousness. For a second, he couldn't move, mind blissfully empty. Then, slowly, his memories seeped back. As he regained control of his senses, the boy realized his eyes were closed. Suddenly, the recall of the pain that had caused him to black out flowed unbidden into his brain. Afraid, Fuyuki decided that he wouldn't open his eyes just yet. Turning slowly to his left, he used his right hand to check the status of his skin. The boy's fingers encountered an unfamiliar substance: definitely not human flesh. Still logy from his trauma, it took him a few seconds to recognize the material as bandages. This realization seemed to jump start his cognitive functions and he shot bolt upright, breathing hard. Fuyuki felt his arms and legs twitch involuntarily and his skin prickled uncomfortably.

When the spasms subsided, he collapsed back onto his bedding. Drenched with sweat, he looked over to his right and saw Dororo calmly applying a new bandage to Aki.

"If you're wondering about those seizure-like movements you just experienced," said Dororo distractedly, "It's your body's basic systems check. It knows that it should have lost contact with the brain, so it's making sure everything is alright. You were practically dead, you know."

Seeing that Dororo was clearly concentrating, Fuyuki focused on trying to stand up. His first attempt was a failure, resulting in him collapsing back hard onto the bedding. The second attempt was even harder and accomplished even less. Realizing he was getting nowhere, the boy did a few breathing exercises to calm himself before rolling onto his front and using his arms to slowly ease into a sitting position. Over by Aki, Dororo nodded absentmindedly.

"That's good. I've seen injuries like yours only a few times before. Take it easy, friend."

Ten minutes passed before Dororo finished with Aki's bandaging. Fuyuki watched in rapt interest as the ninja master spent the next five muttering strange words over the woman's body. When he was finished, her formed glowed blue and her pained expression eased into contented sleep. The heaving of her chest relaxed into gentle breathing, and her clenched fists slowly opened up and regained a healthy pallor.

Sighing with relief, Dororo leaned heavily against the wall and slid down to a sitting position. Fuyuki politely let the Lance Corporal rest for a few minutes, but ultimately his thirst for knowledge overcame his patience.

"What was that you were just muttering right then…and…and…what happened here?"

There was a pause in which Dororo only muttered with little distinction. Fuyuki leaned in closer, desperate for answers. A moment passed in silence. Finally, the Lance Corporal wearily opened his eyes and stared into Fuyuki's pained face. A wave of pity overtook Dororo and he shook the sleep from his system.

"I'm sorry, Fuyuki. You deserve to know what happened, but first I have to know what you remember."

Fuyuki quickly described his recollection of the ordeal. Dororo identified the memories as accurate, predictably cutting off when the ship reached its maximum temperature. Dororo allowed himself a slight smile, relieved that short-term memory functions hadn't been irreversibly damaged in the intense heat.

"That's great, Fuyuki," Dororo said, "I'm glad you're alright."

"What happened? Dororo, answer me!"

"Very well. I protected myself using my assassin magic. A different brand of my magic was what I used to close your mother's wounds. That's what I was doing when I was uttering my prayers you overheard."

"Are we all like this?"

"Unfortunately. It's a wonder why the ship didn't burst into flames like the other one. After you blacked out, the temperature suddenly stopped rising. It returned to normal after a few minutes. I'm guessing the less violent reaction has to do with the fact that the shield was only at 20%, but Kururu would know better than I."

"How come nobody else is awake yet?" Fuyuki began to panic as he realized that nobody else had yet to stir.

"Healing you all took about two hours each. I prioritized who to heal first, and you sustained the worst injuries. Even now, I wouldn't exert myself if I were you."

Fuyuki's heart soared to know that everyone else was fine. Sighing in exhaustion, he leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, though his facial muscles continued to twitch as he fought to stay awake.

"Don't try, Fuyuki. You can walk and talk and think, but your body is still very weak. Sleep. Get better. Everything will be alright."

As Fuyuki dropped into a blissful slumber, Dororo lay him carefully back in his bedding.

He waited for Fuyuki's breathing to become rhythmic before getting up and walking over to where Momoka lay shaking. It had been a lie. He had attempted to heal Momoka first, for she had sustained the heaviest blow. The Lance Corporal had fully expected she would be the first to awake, and her lack of movement made him nervous.

Suddenly, he felt a great pain in his head.

"No…no…no…not this!" Dororo cried out loud.

Leaning forward, he pressed two fingers against Momoka's neck.

No pulse.


	4. Dual Consciousness

I'm sure a few of you picked up on the My Little Pony reference in the last chapter's title. I barely know anything about the show, but two of my good friends follow it religiously. One of them has a shirt that says "20% Cooler", and I thought it might make a clever title. ;D

**Chapter 4: Dual Consciousness**

Within 24 hours, the rest of the crew had regained at the very least a steady pulse. Within 36, they were all on their feet again. All except one. Momoka lay quiet on her bedding. The Keronians sat silently in a corner, and stared ahead. Koyuki sat with teary eyes next to Dororo and rubbed his head whispering the words: "It will be alright. It wasn't your fault. You tried your best."

Aki, in a kneeling position next to Kururu, struggled to maintain her composure. As a mother, she felt it was her duty to act strong. Keroro and Tamama looked down at the floor without saying anything. Even stone-hearted sadist Kururu struggled to contain his emotions. His gaze was steady, but his glasses hid his moist eyes.

Fuyuki was the only one who could bare to sit next to Momoka's body. Her head lay on Fuyuki's lap as he gently stroked her hair. A single tear rolled down his cheek and dripped onto her face. The noise seemed deafening in the soundless room. As Fuyuki's heart throbbed painfully in his chest, the body of his beloved girlfriend slowly lost its heat.

Suddenly, as if giving up the struggle, Momoka's facial features relaxed, gracing her lips with a contented smile. Unable to look, Fuyuki closed his eyes as the tears flowed in earnest.

An eternity passed in pain, as everybody languished in their own personal world of memories. Finally, Aki stood up, breaking the spell. She shakily got to her feet, acutely conscious of every sound she made, and slowly made her way to her son's side. As she kneeled by Fuyuki, Aki realized with a sharp jolt that she had no idea what to say.

Another lifetime passed as Fuyuki buried his head in one hand, using the other to cradle Momoka's cheek. Aki clenched her teeth to stop the tears from streaming down her own face. She reached over and brought the covers up over Momoka's body leaving only her head exposed to the recycled cabin air.

Noticing his mother for the first time, Fuyuki stood up abruptly and trudged slowly away from his girlfriend. As he sat in solitude, unbidden memories resurfaced.

_ The mysterious tribe was attacking Pekopon. Nearly all humans on Earth had been wiped out. Fuyuki should have been sad, but he wasn't. Passionately, he was kissing Momoka on the lips. He loved her with all her heart…_

_ They were on Keron. The Grand Capitol was firing terrible mortar shots. Fuyuki looked up and saw a large metal object hurtling toward the ground next to him. Momoka was there. He loved her more than anything. Using up the last of his strength, he pushed her out of the way, taking the shot for her…_

"I l…love you…" Fuyuki whispered the words in his mind. They seemed so empty and foreign now. If only he had been able to say it one more time, maybe the pain wouldn't be so great.

Ten hours passed.

Kururu suggested reanimation, and while the rest of his platoon glared at him, Aki knew he was being earnest for once. It wasn't a viable idea, but he was trying and that was enough. Keroro, Tamama, and Giroro all took their turns kneeling in front of Momoka's body to say their last goodbyes. The tears of shock had subsided to be replaced with a dull empty throb.

Fuyuki was unresponsive, lost in his own thoughts, and nobody disturbed him.

Koyuki and Dororo talked quickly in the corner using hushed voices. Save for the hissing of unidentifiable whispers and the slow padding of feet on metal, the cabin was silent once again.

Keroro walked over to the two ninjas to see what they were talking about, but were quickly sent away. The leader was too emotionally drained to put up a fight and trudged in the opposite direction with only a shake of his head.

Two hours passed

Four out of the five Keronians were at their stations and piloting the ship. Through their anguish, they knew that the mission was more important than one life. Everybody on the ship knew the high risk when they came aboard, and Momoka had died clinging on to Fuyuki.

Fuyuki had fallen asleep in his crumpled position against the wall. Aki tip-toed quietly to his side covered him with a blanket.

Suddenly, the sound of chanting filled the air. The Keronians at the helm whipped around and Fuyuki awoke with a start. Dororo was kneeled over Momoka's body with a look of intense pain on his face. Koyuki massaged his back with a wet sponge, fresh tears sliding down her face. Time seemed to turn to slow motion as Dororo and Momoka were engulfed in an mysterious, pulsing light.

With a crackle, the light became so piercing, that Fuyuki was forced to avert his eyes. When pulsing behind his eyelids subsided, he cautioned a peak.

Dororo was slumped over in a heap, but Momoka's eyes were open and her chest heaved weakly. Barely able to believe his eyes, he rushed over and embraced her. Grabbing her hand he was delighted to find it was warm. Kissing it, he turned to Dororo with tears of joy in his eyes.

His broad grin faltered when he saw the Lance Corporal's pained face.

"Thank you, Dororo! Whatever you did, thank you!"

With a weak grin, Dororo nodded once. "Take care, Fuyuki. This is my gift to you." He rolled over onto his back, breathing hard. "When I…lose consciousness, I want you and Keroro to go straight to the planet of the mysterious tribe. When you…lean in quickly."

Fuyuki leaned down close to Dororo's mouth. "Listen closely. When Keroro is in desperate need, and there is no hope left, tell him this." Dororo leaned whispered a sentence to Fuyuki which made no sense to the boy. As if his life's goal was finally accomplished, the Lance Corporal leaned back and sighed, "Your devotion…is…truly…inspiring."

With a groan, Dororo lapsed out of consciousness, a content look spreading over his face.

As Fuyuki smiled, Koyuki slowly covered her partner with a blanket. As the cloth covered Dororo's face, Fuyuki's heart skipped a beat. Koyuki looked at Fuyuki with a look of proud sadness.

"He used magic to transfer his life to save Momoka. He's a hero…and our true friend."


	5. This Ain't No Game

**Christmas Update! Happy Holidays.**

**Chapter 5: This Ain't No Game**

The crew loaded Dororo's unconscious body gently onto one of the beds. Koyuki finally emerged from deep inside her luggage and proudly aired out an ornately decorated cloth.

"It's an ancient fabric passed down from ancestor to ancestor in my family. Only someone who gave his life in honorable sacrifice can wear it, and I think Dororo has more than earned it!"

As Koyuki began to drape it over Dororo's face, Giroro rushed forward to stop her, saying, "Wait! Dororo just transferred his soul, right? Does that mean death, or is there a way he can get his soul back?"

Koyuki paused in mid-motion and pondered the question for five straight minutes. The crew looked at each other uncomfortably as an increasingly awkward silence slowly smothered them. Finally, thinking he had done something to offend, Giroro tried to apologize, but Koyuki held up her hand.

Suddenly, her pupils dilated and she slammed her hand onto her opposite palm. A look of wonder and realization passed through her sparkling eyes, and her mouth upturned in a look of joy. Picking up Giroro, she hugged him into her chest and danced as if drunk throughout the cabin. Keroro's mouth dropped open in surprise as Natsumi looked upon the two, frowning with a twinge of jealousy.

"Thank you, Giroro, thank you!" she cried aloud, her voice like a pure melody breaking the cruel silence, "I understand what I have to do now! Dororo told me there was a way to get his soul back, but he didn't quite have the details exactly, but now I know! First, we have to…" There were flustered looks all around as the crew tried to piece together Koyuki's ramblings.

Finally, Momoka could take no more and shot up, crying, "**ENOUGH!**"

So violent and sudden was her outburst that it sent a surprised Fuyuki reeling backward. Getting up from a prone position on the cold ground for what seemed like the thousandth time since he boarded Keroro's ship, the boy looked at his girl with half annoyance, half barely contained curiosity.

The shout turned out far more powerful and booming than she had intended, since her dark persona had taken hold for the instant, and she blushed beet red as all eyes turned on her. Tense moments of silence were becoming commonplace around the emotionally fickle crew, so they didn't know what to expect next.

In the seconds it took Momoka to regain steady pulse from standing up, (coming back from the dead via soul transfer is not something that the recipient recovers from quickly) she managed to compress her maelstrom of thoughts and feelings into coherent sentences.

"Um…" she stuttered, "I know that it's my fault that Dororo is lying there soulless, and um…I think that as the weak person who couldn't make it and had to be saved, I should be the one to, you know, do whatever it is that has to be done to get Dororo's soul back thank you!" Momoka finished the last part of her sentence in one breath and sat back down faster than she stood up.

The blushing girl looked over at Fuyuki and found that he was grinning at her. In fact, the entire crew was. Mortified, Momoka buried her face in her hands and tried to refrain from tears. It would just exacerbate the situation to appear even weaker, but despite her best efforts, liquid formed on the sides of her eyes.

The surprising sound of tumultuous applause hurriedly dragged her out of the world of self-pity. Barely daring to look up, she snuck a quick peak from between her legs and gasped.

The entire crew was clapping for _her_!

"Well said!" cheered Natsumi, the take-on-the-world fire back in her eyes.

"Ku ku ku…it appears you are an inspiration to us all."

"We can do this! Dororo not only believed in you, but in all of us!"

It was as though the chains of doubt and fear had snapped. Fueled by Momoka's unintended passion, they began working themselves into a fury. Giroro jumped into the laser turret and fired off a few shots which got plenty of hoots and hollers from the rest of the crew. Through the noise and shouting, however, Momoka's eyes sought only Fuyuki. Her gaze intercepted his, and in the briefest moments they shared hours of conversation.

"Thanks to your honesty, I feel as if we can pull through with this impossible mission as weird as that sounds. From the looks of it, the crew feels the same way."

Tears flowed from Momoka's eyes in earnest now. Fuyuki knew just what to say to make her feel special again.

Slowly, with no heed to emotions, the ship drifted ever closer to the mysterious tribe's homeworld. Each second that ticked by, their chances of survival went down. On board, however, nobody's mind was on the suicide mission. Keroro danced drunkenly with Tamama, whose cheeks glowed a positively brilliant shade of red, to Keronian pop hits. Though raucous to human ears, Fuyuki, Momoka, Aki, and Koyuki joined in the wild gyrations. It wasn't long until the entire crew was on their knees gasping for breath amidst uproarious laughter. All rations that had been conserved over the long trip were devoured in one last feast to remember. Running up a horrible debt on the Kero-ball's storage teleportation feature, Keroro summoned a chandelier and a beautiful spread so that they could dine as if in a 5-star restaurant. Everyone was having the best of times.

As Aki avidly discussed the idea of a "Sergeant Keroro" anime with Tamama and the Sergeant himself, and the human couple cuddled in the corner with a cup of hot chocolate, Kururu excused himself momentarily from the festivities. In his R&D cave at the back of the ship, his uncharacteristic smile drained slowly from his face. The Sergeant Major opened up a data channel to the scanners and pushed the power to maximum.

A blue beam only visible on his computer screen spread out through open space in a 10K mile radius. The mysterious tribe's planet was the first to appear on the sensors. Large and ominous, Kururu realized with a jolt, that he may have been the first to discover the home planet of the destructive race.

His neutral smirk turning downward in anger that surprised even him, he narrowed the search down to the area around the planet. With the decreased radius, thousands of objects appeared. Some, Kururu knew, were asteroids or other space debris.

It took him two minutes to type in the proper algorithms and passwords to access the heat sensors. Since the Sergeant Major had built his entire tech from the ground up himself, his lack of speed disgusted him. It was only then that he realized his hands were shaking.

_An odd feeling…somehow, I can't get them to stop._

A strange, unfamiliar feeling took hold of Kururu and stopped his supercomputer of a brain in its tracks. The music and babble were still clearly audible from the main room, and the R&D room's security cameras gave Kururu a clear view of the party.

As Sergeant Major Kururu stared dimly at the hundreds of glowing ships on his scanner, all waiting to engage, he began to imagine a world where he wasn't cleaning up Keroro's messes. No Sergeant to tell him to build a new apocalypse device to enslave Pekopon. No Corporal to yell and beat him up. No Tamama and Dororo to provide "teamwork" as they called it. No Natsumi and Aki to do naughty things to. The list stretched on an on.

And suddenly, Kururu knew.

The Sergeant Major tentatively stretched out his arm. A moment passed in a hard silence. Then, it extended all the way out and his hand touched the monitor where his friends enjoyed what very well may be their last meals.

Sergeant Major Kururu wept.

He took of his glasses and put his head down on his desk. Large red eyes glowed bright in the dark room: the eyes of pure innocence. It was as if he had been saving his tears all his life for this one moment. They rushed out and splashed with obnoxious noise on the metal ground. With great heaving sobs, Kururu let every emotion flow through the ducts.

Then it was finished as quick as it had come. Kururu put his glasses back on. They shown brilliantly in the light. His face now dry, he swiveled his chair back to face the screen and smiled thinly.

"Ku ku ku…those bastards are going to pay now! Nobody makes the mighty Sergeant Major lose control! Nobody!"

As his final act of compassion, Kururu waited until the last possible minute to inform his commander of the discouraging odds. The crew was exhausted, but well into their second rousing game of MONOPOLY when suddenly the lights flickered off with a sizzle. All heads immediately whipped around in panic, but their worries were misplaced. The lights soon popped back on, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

"Don't be too relieved, ladies!" the familiarly annoying voice of the most intelligent but sadistic R&D researcher and inventor boomed from the middle of the room. Everyone knew what was happening immediately. Snapping to attention, the Keronians lined up in military fashion.

"Ready for briefing SIR!" cried Tamama.

In a flash, Keroro produced the Kero-ball and the fancy trappings disappeared. The cozy spread was now a military cruiser, the carousing party-goers, disciplined soldiers of war. Kururu faltered for a second, sad to see it all go, but logic quickly overtook his senses.

Surges of hot anger soon overwhelmed the logic as he explained the size of the enemy forces and their low survival chance. When he concluded, the entire cockpit was in a state of dismayed shock.

"C-can I have a percentage value of our chances of reaching home again?" asked Giroro, voice wavering. Natsumi looked on with terrified interest. Is this what scared the fearless Weapons Specialist?

Kururu answered immediately: "0.000001% chance."

"Well that's still some hope, right?" pleaded Fuyuki as the rest of the team sagged like an old mattress.

With a wry smile, Kururu cocked his head to the side as he answered. "Well, I added that 0.000001 to the computer's analysis of 0%. We might reach the planet and all enemy guns jam."

The first enemy they encountered was a scout. Momoka was ready in a space-suit outside the K66 ship. As the curious vessel edged nearer, Momoka thought about Koyuki. During the party, the ninja girl had taken her aside and told her:

"Don't worry about it. We need to concentrate on landing on the planet first. Then, my plan can begin. I'm counting on you!"

This kindness was more than Momoka felt she deserved, and a hot-blooded rush of rage raced through her body. With Natsumi and Giroro manning the two laser turrets and Aki piloting and Keroro, and Kururu aiding navigation, there was nothing she could do to help. Nothing but…

Kururu's patented "Near-Indestructible-Space-Suit" combined with the pinpoint accuracy of his tractor beam led to where Momoka now sat: outside the ship, zooming through space at speeds a human airplane could only dream of. The conditions would crush a normal spacesuit in milliseconds, but this was no ordinary suit.

"Forward!" she rasped through her com device. Even with the heavy duty armor, space still felt uncomfortable.

Fuyuki dragged the joystick forward and the tractor beam moved her toward the front of the ship. Her boyfriend was in charge of her life. One slip on the control and she would be hurled at a thousand KPH into the unknown void. She smiled as she realized that she didn't want it to be any other way. She and Fuyuki…they were a team, and she was out to prove it.

At Kururu's signal, Momoka screwed up all her anger into a little ball, summoning her dark persona, and rushed forward. Her legs propelled her with more torque than an industrial machine, and she flew at the scout.

Two creatures that looked remarkably like Dimentio gasped with surprise as a girl landed on the hull of their ship. As they prepared countermeasures, Momoka screamed out in rage: "**DAMN YOU!**" and slammed the metal with every ounce of her superhuman strength.

Fuyuki pulled back hard on the controls to pull Momoka back using the tractor beam as the scout ship collapsed upon itself in the vacuum of space, crippled by a shattered upper hull. Instead of falling back gently on the front of the ship, however, she went shooting back half a kilometer before Fuyuki could regain control. Landing with an unpleasant bump, Momoka began to rethink the sanity of her assignment.

"Fuyuki!" she yelled into her com.

There was a short pause before the sheepish voice of the boy came on the air. "I'm sorry, Momoka."

"Don't be sorry. Use more finesse instead. Take care of me, OK? This ain't no game. There is no respawn button." Momoka blushed hard at the "Take care of me" part. _It sounds like we're a just-married couple!_

The response brought her back to reality. "I've got you Momoka. I won't lose you again."

The com link when silent as Fuyuki positioned Momoka gently on the front of the ship again. He was concentrating with every fiber of his being now, and it made the girly girl in Momoka flutter with glee.

A glee that soon disappeared as the reality of where she was fully sank in.

On the front of a ship in a space suit, hundreds of enemies incoming, on the front of a ship in a space suit.

**Author's Note: This chapter was fun to write. I hope you enjoy this special longer chapter as my Christmas gift to you all!**

**BTW, the repetition in the last line is on purpose.**


	6. Outnumbered

**Chapter 6: Outnumbered**

The darker of Momoka's two halves was feeling quite at home in the sturdy space suit. She marveled at how well she could maneuver in armor over ten times her mass. For the third time, she leapt from the K66 ship and landed on an approaching scout drone. They were ready for her this time though and fired a concussive blast upward at her head. Luckily, by twisting sideways at the perfect moment, she managed to veer to the side. The second blast came from the turret on the top of the ship. Fuyuki grabbed her with the beam this time, and the blast soared harmlessly away. This save increased Momoka's velocity, and she tumbled hard back onto the top of the scout ship. Her left wrist bent backwards as she braced her fall. Momoka winced, one eye closed, waiting for the pain. It didn't come; instead, a shining broadsword shot out of the wrist part of her suit. Overcoming her surprise, Momoka hacked at the ship, tearing a wide hole in the top and jumped backwards as the void crushed the vessel.

Landing back on the K66 ship, the girl stared in wonder at the fluidity and control she had over the sword. Since it was attached to the suit, she was guaranteed not to drop or lose it unless it snapped in half, and just be flexing her wrist, she could retract it at a moment's notice.

While mutilating the next two scout drones, she found her right wrist worked the same way. She smiled to herself as she dual-wielded the weapons of her enemies destruction. The drones were coming in larger numbers now, but she was becoming more and more powerful too.

Natsumi watched in shocked awe from the laser turret room. Kururu could only guess at the true size of the mysterious fleet, so she and Giroro had been instructed not to waste any energy cells. Still, she expected, with three or four drones coming at once now, that she would have had to fire at least one shot. Momoka was making terrifying work of the reinforced metal, doing in seconds with her bare hands that which would have taken a few pulses of the guns.

"I know Dark Momoka is strong, but this is ridiculous…" she muttered to herself as she trained the auto-lock system on another drone only for it to be destroyed in the next second by a vicious bladed uppercut.

"It isn't just her, you know. Ku ku ku…my suit increases the power of the being inside by 10 times. For an average human, this would give them the strength to move an Earth car maybe, but multiplication does wonders when the base value is so high, if you know what I mean." Natsumi jumped as Kururu came up behind her. "You've seen Dark Momoka fight off trained Keronian operatives single handedly. Think about what she can do with 10 times that power, near indestructible armor, and two of my very own hand-forged broadswords."

Still laughing to himself, Kururu descended from the turret room and grabbed a bowl of curry from a hidden compartment on the wall. "This will be fun to watch indeed…ku ku ku…" he murmured to nobody in particular.

It wasn't long before the scouts were replaced by light warships. Momoka struggled in midair as she bounced off a seemingly invisible surface. The new attackers had shields and bigger guns, as Momoka was made brutally aware. Crashing back down onto the hull of the K66 cruiser, she gritted her teeth to stem the pain. Punching herself in the side, she broke the seal on the first of four medi-packs built into the suit and sighed as cool relief washed over her body.

As the euphoria of painlessness receded, a grim realization gripped her. She could get hit only three more times, and the healing gels would be gone. "Furthermore," she said aloud to Fuyuki over com, "It doesn't seem like they've even sent out a fraction of their true firepower."

A time that felt like days to Momoka passed as the mysterious planet became larger and larger. She was out of breath, all medi-packs gone, but she grinned. She was still alive, and those bastards were getting angry. Though moving at a velocity well beyond the speed of sound, the land mass was so large, that they barely seemed to be moving at all. It was when they were close enough for Kururu to scan some of the larger structures on the surface that the real firepower began to emerge.

It was sleek and shiny. Completely silver, with large foreign symbols painted with meticulous effort in red on the side. Its pointed front housed the largest cannon the K66 Platoon had ever seen, and four other anti-ship guns jutted out from the sides of it. Two bright "eyes" glowing orange on both sides of the cannon marked the lookout point and steering room. The sharp looking front morphed quickly into a graceful curve near the middle in order to house what looked like massive docking bays. The back curved once again into two sickle like hooks making the entire vessel look like a large sea creature. Keroro's eyes missed all of this on his first look in favor of the enemy mother ship's most grand feature. A monumental rotating turret, easily the size of the Earth's moon, adorned the top of the mother ship. Five large missile launchers were organized neatly in an X formation like how dots are arranged on a dice, while the rest of the space was taken up by rows and rows of lasers.

The smaller enemy warships and scouts that had been assaulting the K66 Cruiser so intently just minutes before quickly backed off and retreated inside the docking bays of the mother ship.

Giroro, who had come down from the turret room to look at the ship in the large observation window, used Kururu's optics to zoom in on one of the lasers. "Hmmm… MK5 StarShredder Anti-Ship Lasers (MK5SS). Standard addition to any military fighter these days."

"Pshaw!" smirked Keroro in an attempt to lighten the mood a bit, "I thought these guys were super advanced! All they got on their 'super turret' is our basic tech?"

"You're right about it being basic," replied Giroro seriously, "We have two of the MK5SS model on loaded onto the two turrets we have. However, we have two. They have thousands, not to mention their mother ship is the size of a small planet. Putting on a good fifty feet of armor would be nothing for something that size."

"In essence, ku ku ku…" followed up Kururu, "They're mocking us by attacking with our weapons."

The entire team huddled in the observation deck. The mother ship was going nowhere, cockily standing in space like a master waiting with a whip for his slave to come out of hiding. The K66 Cruiser was stopped to as nobody wanted to get in range of the frontal cannon.

"Strategy is the name of the game here, men…and women," whispered Keroro, as if the mysterious tribe might somehow hear him, "We're really outnumbered and really really outgunned, but we have a few tricks up our sleeves, right Kururu?"

The Sergeant Major just picked his nose and turned away. Keroro went cold. If the R&D specialist wasn't boasting, it meant he had nothing to boast about. "W-what else do we know, then?" he stuttered, "Information is power, right?"

It didn't look like anyone thought information would be an effective counter to a thousand lasers, but a smart-aleck comment in the current situation would have been the height of bad taste.

After a moment, Giroro spoke up, if only to break the silence, "From what I've seen, the main problem with the MK5SS is that it overheats too quickly. That problem was solved in its successor, the MK5SSX, but the improved cooling system was too costly to mass produce. If you look at the plans for this ship, you'll see it was built to fit four lasers, but since the MK5SS provides the best fire rate and penetration capabilities for the expense, they were selected to be attached to this ship.

"Why not attach two more cheaper ones after the two MK5SSes then?" asked Natsumi.

"I was getting to that," answered the Weapons Specialist quickly, "The MK5SS give off too much heat for any more turrets to be added. That's my point. Unless everything behind that giant turret is a subzero cooling generator, they won't be able to fire the guns for very long, or at least, they won't be able to fire them all at once. Maybe they don't know that, since they're obviously using the MK5SS just to spite us. This is a possible advantage."

"I'd like to believe that," shot in Tamama only seconds after Giroro finished, "but I don't think that they'd be stupid enough not to try out their weapons at least once. What I th-"

"They're stuck-up and overconfident enough," interjected Momoka as Tamama began her second sentence, "Just look at them floating in space like some tyrant with nothing to do but to torture his subjects. It makes my **BLOOD BOIL!**"

While Fuyuki tried to calm down a raging and overstressed Momoka, Koyuki continued the discussion. "I don't know for sure," she began hesitantly. Then, she spotted Dororo's body covered in the ceremonial shroud and took heart. "Actually, I do know. We can't just sit around and argue. Eventually, we have to fight one way or another."

"Just flying in guns blazing doesn't seem like a viable option, though," said Aki, uncharacteristically worried and grim, "I'm not sure how we should approach this."

An electrical silence filled the room as the entire crew concentrated on finding the answer to the one biggest problem they had ever faced.

"No…that won't work…that cannon on the front will zap us in one hit…"

"Maybe we could…but then those missiles would get us. Heat seeking at the very least, I'm sure."

"If only those four anti-ship guns weren't on the sides of the front cannon..."

"Their firewall is…ku ku ku...too strong for me, believe it or not."

Idea after failed idea bounced back and forth around the cabin like rubber balls. Crew members interrupted crew members, and eventually a shouting match broke out over the question of which type of missile had the greatest max velocity.

"SHUT UP!" cried Koyuki finally as Giroro attempted to stuff the barrel of his gun farther down Kururu's throat, "I know we're all stressed, but we need to be calm, like a ninja."

The room lapsed into sheepish silence as Koyuki slapped the two warring Keronians on the head. Suddenly, an uncontrollable smile broke out and she whipped around to face the stunned crew. "The way of the ninja!" she yelped, "Why don't you send Momoka and me onboard the mother ship. It should be much easier to destroy from the inside out."

"Didn't we already go over this?" Giroro snapped, embarrassed about being hit on the head, "We agreed it's too risky. If their radar is anything like ours, and I'm sure it's better, they could easily spot Momoka incoming. Even with tractor beam control, she would be incinerated instantly out there."

"I know that, but what if we use stealth. I mean ninja stealth."

"What good would that do?"

Koyuki pondered for a second the best way to answer Giroro's question. Finally, she slapped her fist into her palm and leaned in close, making the Corporal scuttle quickly backward. "You know why Dororo is never noticed?"

A chorus of "umms" and "I don't knows" filled the room. The ninja girl waited politely for them to finish. Finally, Keroro raised his hand.

"It's because he's so forgettable."

Koyuki pouted and patted the Sergeant very hard on the head. "No on all counts. He uses a special brand of magic to separate his soul temporarily from his physical flesh. This is hard, so to keep in practice, he often exists in a separate form from his body."

"I guess Keronians and humans are the same when it comes to how we identify each other," spoke up Aki, "because his presence is elsewhere, I suppose we often can't 'feel' him spiritually as we can others. Maybe this is why he's always forgotten."

A voice came from the corner. Momoka, who hadn't spoken since her outburst, lumbered back into the scene, fully outfitted in her suit once again. "This is all fair and good, but what does this have to do with me? Maybe you can 'separate your soul' or whatever, Koyuki, but I sure can't."

"You don't need to!" answered Koyuki, "I'm going to do it for you!"

"Wait. You can separate somebody else's soul from their body?"

"I can try!"

It was the best plan they had, and Momoka soon found herself in the missile deployment room of the K66 Cruiser.

"Dororo has perfected his soul separation to the point where his body will go onto 'auto-pilot' when his soul is elsewhere," stated Koyuki, proudly, "but I haven't the slightest clue how he does that. I separate your soul from your body, and your body stays still as a stone."

"Fine!" cried Momoka, squirming in her suit, "I don't want to be moving around without my knowledge."

Fuyuki helped Momoka climb into an empty missile capsule and held her hand as she gently lowered herself into the claustrophobic tube. "You'll be alright," Fuyuki murmured gently to his girl, "You can do this."

"**DAMN RIGHT I CAN! JUST SHUT UP AND LET'S DO THIS THING!**"

Fuyuki jumped backwards in surprise, and the entire crew burst out laughing for the first time in many tense hours. It was relieving to be finally doing something productive. As Koyuki channeled her powers through meditation, Giroro finessed the trajectory of the launch while Kururu calculated the amount of force needed to eject the capsule. The results were shouted across the room to the rest of the crew who set up a second missile with the exact same specifications. Koyuki planned to separate her soul and follow Momoka once she breached the mother ship.

Though Fuyuki had a bad feeling, watching the missile lock into place and fire, the launch went off without a hitch. Momoka, or Momoka's soul, looked down from space at the speeding capsule containing her body. It was a surreal experience. She quickly found she only had to think to communicate with Koyuki, and asked: _How will I get back to my body?_

_ I can only hold on to your soul from within a certain range. Once you go out of it, your body will reclaim your soul. The turret will see you at that point, probably, so pull on the switch thing inside the missile, and the back part will break away leaving the head. From there, you can use it to kick off with your super strength and land on the ship's outside maintenance deck. I don't know the specifics, but Giroro made it sound easy, so go for it!_

Momoka tried to conceal her annoyance (_easy?!)_, but that soon became the least of her problems.

"How does Momoka look on the radar?" asked Fuyuki, anxious to make sure that she was alright.

"Well, obviously they can't see her," giggled a very giddy Kururu, "We really got them this time, the losers!" Pulling up the ship's radar, he did a quick scan of the area. "See, in the place where Momoka should be, nothing com-"

Kururu felt his mind real. "Wait…we can see her."

"WHAT?" cried Natsumi, "HOW?"

The crew looked at each other in a panic. It was not possible. Suddenly, Fuyuki gasped and fell to his knees. The others stared at him in terror. "Dark Momomka…" he began, "DAMN IT! I'M AN IDIOT!"

"WHAT?" everybody chorused.

"I was surprised when I tried to comfort her while helping her get into the capsule and found that her Dark form responded. Momoka successfully escaped her body, but she has two souls, doesn't she."

_Two souls!_

Those two words reverberated around the cabin and the temperature seemed to drop.

"Then that means…" trailed off Aki.

The crew's horrified thoughts were interrupted by the deafening roar of a thousand guns firing.


	7. Trust

**Warning: Use of vulgar language in this chapter. Not overdone, I think, but it bears a warning.**

**Note: Remember that the bolded text (which there will be some of) in the chapter is the thoughts and voice of Dark Momoka. None of it is A/N. I never interrupt the chapter for A/N anyway.**

**Chapter 7: Trust**

_** Crap CRAP! **_Dark Momoka swore internally as her rocket instantly shredded and she found herself floating unprotected in space. Her mind raced as she looked down the massive barrel of the frontal cannons and realized that the entirety of the K66 Cruiser could fit snugly inside.

"**It's looks plenty bigger up close…**" she muttered grimly to herself as her limbs moved erratically in an effort to escape the next hail of bullets, "**Doesn't matter if I can tank a thousand of those freakin small laser things. One hit from that cannon and there'll be nothing left for goodie-goodie Momoka to slip back into.**

Twisting around, Dark Momoka tried to use breaststroke to 'swim' in zero gravity, but it was in vain. No matter how hard she tried, even with the 10x strength suit, without anything to kick off of, she was stuck. A sitting duck, the alternate soul steamed in helpless anger. "**That old scientist dude really wasn't kidding when he said an object at rest stays at rest. If I made a freakin armored spacesuit with blades in the wrists, I'd put some GOD DAMN THRUSTERS IN IT TOO!" **She threw herself to the left with all her strength, but the suit was too snug for it to do all that much. Still, it was enough. She felt some relief as her body began to drift slowly out of the cannon's range.

"**Maybe Giroro was right when he said that the mysterious tribe idiots never fired a MP5SS before. They're all glowing hot, and haven't fired since the initial burst…still, I don't have much time before they cool.**" Swallowing her exceptionally large pride, Dark Momoka commenced in what looked to the other Momoka floating above like a demented form of break dancing. By moving her body back and forth in a jerky motion, she continued to slowly drift.

_Can you hear me! _Momoka yelled down as hard as she could, but Dark Momoka never stopped.

_Nobody can communicate with you but me. _Came the reply from Koyuki, _You're a soul without body right now. You can move and talk, but the most anyone will ever know of you in this form is a tingling presence, and that's when you're shouting and punching them._

_ How did this even happen… _thought Momoka to herself,_I thought that this soul separation thing would definitely work._

Even though she wasn't trying to communicate, Koyuki heard and replied at once: _It appears that you have two souls. I'm not sure how or why, but it's the only thing that makes sense._

_ Impossible! My Darker side and I, we're just heads and tails of the same coin! A personality thing, right?_

_ That's what we all thought, but now that I think about it, you two really do seem like separate entities sometimes. I mean, mood swings and all that is understandable, but the super strength and the fact that both you and the other are often present at the same time…that's different._

_ So…let me get this straight. When you pulled me out of my body, my other soul took control?_

_ Seems so, but it's all so mysterious. If only Dororo were conscious, I'm sure he would know what to do here._

Momoka broke connection for a second, thoughts and ideas mixed with dread in the whirlwind of her mind as she tried to wrap her head around the concept of two souls in one body. Suddenly, an awful thought popped into her brain and she voiced her concerns at once: _Since Dark Momoka has full control over me…um…my body, do you think she'll go crazy and do bad stuff while pretending to be me?_

Koyuki thought about it for a bit. Momoka could sense that she was thinking, but the individual topics were flying by too quickly for her to process any of them. Even in her distress, she felt humbled by the complexity of the human brain. Finally, when Momoka thought she couldn't hold back her curiosity for much longer, Koyuki's voice returned sharply to her mind. _Truth is, Dark Momoka is really unpredictable. Since you both want the same thing at this moment, to destroy the mother ship and get to safety, there shouldn't be many problems right now. IF your Dark form gets on board, you can easily slip back in the body and everything will be alright._

_ Why can't I do it now? She needs my help!_

_ It would only hurt her, _replied Koyuki before Momoka could make a move, _with only Dark Momoka in your body, her power is the strongest it's ever been. She's in what Dororo would call a ninja situation which means an impossible one. She'll need every ounce of undiluted strength to escape._

_ And I would…dilute her?_

_ Pretty much. _Koyuki felt Momoka's feelings of inadequacy grow and a rush of sympathy shot forth. _Don't take it so bad! She needs you as much as you need her. That's probably why you exist in the same body. Without you as a balance, she would probably be in the custody of the galactic police for some reason or another._

_ Yeah…I hope you're right. Thank you, Koyuki._

Back on the K66 Cruiser, Fuyuki was becoming more and more agitated with each passing second. Pacing back and forth, his uncharacteristic glower targeted each Keronian in turn.

"Why didn't you know this would happen?" he whispered to Keroro so dangerously, that the Sergeant took two quick steps back, a bead of sweat rolling down his cheek. "Why didn't you run tests? Why did you let this…this…WHY?"

"KERO!" came the terrified voice of the cowardly commanding officer, "Nobody knew! The Nishizawas have the best medical doctors in the world working for them and they never knew!"

"Don't you do…I don't know, check-ups and all that? You're living at MY house for FREE! Can't you do ANYTHING right?"

"This isn't a health matter…ku ku ku…"muttered Kururu, for once slightly reluctant to show off his knowledge, "It's more of a spiritual thing. If Dororo did 'check-ups' as you put it, he may have found some discrepancies with the soul, but he wouldn't because unlike me, he respects privacy."

Fuyuki ground his teeth, his legendary rage growing by unstable. Unable to look at Keroro anymore without kicking him, he whirled around to face Giroro. Though the Corporal was beginning to tire of the Pekoponian boy's ridiculously anger, he knew the feeling. Single minded fury to return to the one you love: an emotional all too familiar for his tastes.

Looking away, he walked off stiffly toward the missile launching tubes. He never got away. "DON'T YOU WALK AWAY FROM ME, CORPORAL!" yelled Fuyuki turning red, then nearly purple, "YOU…YOU MUST HAVE CALIBRATED THE MISSILE TRAGECTORY WRONG OR…OR SOMETHING!"

Giroro also turned a deeper shade of crimson as he whirled around in indignant rage. "Shut up, _boy_!" he growled in the commanding tone of a drill Sergeant. The Keronians nearby snapped to attention and even Fuyuki, blinded by his emotions, appeared taken aback. "Listen, you," he began quietly, "I know Momoka is in some serious shit right now, but that's no excuse to start pointing fingers and yelling."

Fuyuki sputtered and his arms made wild gestures, but before he could utter a sound, Giroro continued. "It wasn't too long ago, if you remember, that I was caged up and tortured by that pompous tyrant Kamimi back on Keron. Was I angry?" he waited for an answer.

After a pause in which everybody looked at each other, Aki spoke up: "I'm sure you were."

"EXACTLY!" cried Giroro, startling everyone again, "Hell yeah I was pissed. Worse, I had no idea how Natsumi was faring. Didn't make withstanding the pain any easier, believe me. I escaped though. You know how?"

"Dororo and Koyuki helped you break free in the courtroom, right?" answered Fuyuki, becoming furious all over again, "How is this even slightly, SLIGHTLY related to what I'm going th-"

"You'd be put on cleaning detail for the rest of your miserable life with that whiny attitude," cut in Giroro before Fuyuki could finish, which made him stop. He took a step back which the Corporal saw as a sign to continue.

"If I blamed and struck out at everyone who got close to me, I would have been filleted by Kamimi's guards long before I even saw the courtroom. Did I survive by luck then? No. I survived because of two things."

Giroro paused here, silently daring Fuyuki to interrupt him again. The room was deathly silent. Nodding with satisfaction, the old war veteran finished his speech.

"One, I kept my cool. Two, I believed in my allies. I could have attacked back, but if not used at the right moment, all the strength in the world won't save you. If I had blamed my platoon mates, my mind would have been far too bitter and thus brittle to survive the harsh interrogation I received."

The room was as still as a grave as the Corporal ended. Then, Natsumi began to clap quietly.

"That's right…" she said, "Being angry solves nothing in these kinds of situations. We need to buck up, and think of a way to solve this problem!"

As the rest of the crew enthusiastically shared the same sentiment, Fuyuki, who seemed to have calmed down since his initial bout of fury, bent down and looked Giroro in the eyes. "I'm sorry. I'll try to be more like you."

Giroro blushed lightly. Though the wording of the praise wasn't anything special, he could see in the boy's eyes just how determined he was. Giroro felt his respect for the Pekoponian grow. "Well…um…I'm trained for this kind of stuff, you know. I've been in the military long enough to learn those two lessons both from my commanders and from experience." Suddenly feeling awkward, the Corporal turned away and walked toward the missile launch tubes yelling offhandedly, "Never lose heart! You'll go far, kid."

"I'm sorry all of you!" Fuyuki turned to the rest of his fellow crewmembers, and they were so relieved to see his smiling face, that they burst out laughing.

The moment passed in an instant. The smile drained off the boy's face like water, and an intense frown replaced it instantly. "That doesn't change anything for our current situation, though," he said, "We still need to find a way to get Dark Momoka the power she needs."

"Ku ku ku…mindset is everything. With you not babbling like a crazed monkey, maybe I can think of a solution!"

"Watch it there, toad," intoned Natsumi out of the side of her mouth, fearing that Fuyuki was going to grow angry again from Kururu's unsubtle jibes, but her worry was for naught. Fuyuki laughed it off and knelt down by the Sergeant Major's laptop.

"Anything I can do to help?"

"Ku ku…You! You want to help ME? Ku ku ku…"

Fuyuki waited, still smiling, as Kururu's laugh stretched passed 30 seconds. Giroro who was now watching the boy very intently, noticed a bead of sweat roll down his cheek and a vein popping in his temple. He knew the Pekoponian was trying his best not to smack Kururu into the next galaxy, and he was glad that his lecture hadn't fallen on deaf ears.

Suddenly, the R&D specialist paused in his mirth, his smirk becoming slightly lopsided. Fuyuki looked intently at Kururu, trying to decipher what he was thinking, but his face was unreadable. All at once, he looked up and spoke: "You know what? If your memory is good, maybe you _can_ help me."

"What do you need to know?" asked Fuyuki confidently, and Natsumi beamed, Aki doing the same by her daughter's side. They both knew that this was Fuyuki's specialty. When it came to occult, powers of observation, and memory, the Pekoponian boy was second to none.

"The model number of your girlfriend's (ku ku ku…) suit; what is it?"

This wasn't hard, since Fuyuki had spent the last seven hours staring at Momoka ripping scouts apart with her bare hands. During breaks in enemy waves, they had frequently talked via the com and she would come right up to the window.

"The model number is clearly displayed on the top left corner of the front. It says XPow10. Don't know what that means, but I'm sure that makes sense to you."

"Yes, yes. I know that already! Do you think I would have forgotten that she was testing my newest invention: the Extra-Power Model 10 Suit? You idiot, I mean the model number, you know, the serial number on the side."

Fuyuki distinctly remembered seeing a string of nine or ten or so numbers painted in white on the side of Momoka's right leg, but the exact digits were a blur. Grunting, Fuyuki sat down on the ground and massaged his temples. _This is where I can help! I can't screw this up after the commotion I just made!_

The Sergeant Major, who had been waiting patiently up to now, made a big show of looking at his watch. Upon seeing what time was displayed, he put his hand to his cheek and sighed noisily while making the fakest "sad clown" face the crew had ever seen. It was so melodramatically disgusting that even Tamama had to gag.

"You know, Fuyuki, if you don't know what the number is, that's fine," said Kururu, putting his arm on the boy's shoulder, "But know that without those ten numbers, Momoka, ahem, your _girlfriend_ is as good as ashes."

"Girlfriend…"

"Good as ashes…"

Those phrases resonated hard inside Fuyuki's head and he gasped as if punched in the gut. His eyes dilated and he fell to the ground as his body pumped adrenaline up to his brain. He could remember. He _had_ to remember.

Laughing quietly to himself, the Sergeant Major began to walk away. Natsumi, enraged at this point, was prepared to punch Kururu into the wall, but Fuyuki got there first. Grabbing the yellow frog by the neck, he spun him harshly around until the two faced each other, their eyes centimeters apart.

Kururu wondered what his fate was going to be. He could imagine all kinds of cruel physical punishments Natsumi had done and could do. He could imagine the different kinds of torture used by the Keronian military. There was his own twisted imagination itself; far worse than anything in existence. Then, there was enraged Fuyuki. By the looks of the boys face, sweat covered, eyes sockets vibrating, hands shaking, whatever he was about to do was going to make a nice new entry in the History of Modern Pain.

"8427409966. Now SAVE MOMOKA."

Kururu felt his butt hit the ground. Dazed for a moment, he just sat there, swaying as if being hit by a light breeze in a park. The Pekoponian boy had remembered. The others urged him up and pushed him into the R&D lair so he could begin, but the entire time, his thoughts were on Fuyuki's mentality.

Analyzing the data he had gathered so far of Fuyuki's extremely rare and deadly outbursts of anger, they seemed to follow a very distinct pattern. The catalyst: serious cases of trust betrayal or the endangerment of a loved one. The entire Momoka problem fell squarely under "endangerment of a loved one", so Kururu concluded that the legendary rage was what he had indeed just witnessed minutes before. Of course, the reason why he and Keroro at the very least weren't in a coma baffled him.

"I don't like to not know something…ku ku ku…" Kururu muttered to himself as he typed a few equations into computer according to the statistics of the 8427409966 model of the power suit.

Suddenly, the door to his lair opened and Giroro walked in. Kururu started and whirled around.

"Ku ku ku…are you kidding me? You haven't even given me two minutes. You think making a power-multiplier-secondary is easy? Give me three more minutes and I'll be done. Thank you, goodbye."

"We know you're not finished, you slacker," Giroro shot back, "I brought some juice. It's from Fuyuki who told me to tell you that despite his anger, he still is your friend. Don't know why he'd ever give anything less than a rocket down the throat for a perverted jerk like you though."

Kururu ignored the stream of insults and took the juice from the Corporal's hand. Taking a big sip, he thought about the concept of energy. Fuyuki exerted intense amounts of energy when he was in his "fury mode". Maybe that energy could be directed elsewhere…

The Sergeant Major shook his head. He had an idea, but it would have to wait. Rescue missions are priority number one.

"Well, whatever," growled Giroro, throwing up his hands and walking toward the door, "Don't say thank you. Didn't expect an ingrate like you to ev-"

"Wait old man."

Giroro stopped, his hand on the exit button.

"When you retire, you should be a therapist or at least a drill sergeant. Oh, and tell Fuyuki 'thanks'."

There was no answer, but Kururu could guess the look on his platoon mate's face, and he grinned to himself. He heard the pneumatic hiss of the door opening and closing and he got back to work.

"**Damn this feels GOOD!**" cried out Dark Momoka as she dodged laser blasts. The mysterious tribe had learned from their errors and stopped firing them all at once. About twenty would go off every second which allowed significant cool time. This would still be an impossible situation for a normal human, but Dark Momoka's reactions when boosted by ten were beyond that of a machine. Twisting into acrobatic poses in order to dodge blasts, she marveled at how well the suit conformed to her body motion. "**It's like all I have to do is think, and this thing moves with me. I take it back! Kururu is a genius!**"

Though dodging hundreds of lasers made her feel alive, the real source of happiness was stemming from a feeling of: "**FREEDOM!**" she cried out, willing the entire universe to hear her, "**Freedom from that goodie-goodie's wimpy presence! Free to finally unleash the horror which is TRUE MOMOKA!**"

"Goodie-goodie Momoka" who had moved in close enough to hear her counterpart talk, felt despair grip her. _I'm definitely the weaker of us two. I…I want to just drift off and live as a soul forever so nobody can ever call me weak!_

_ Wouldn't work!_ Came Koyuki's voice, _Once you…your soul goes out of my range, it goes zipping back into the body. _

_ I wasn't going to actually do that… _Momoka felt the emotion related to a face flushing, though she had no body for it actually to play out. _It's just one of those things…you know…that you think that are super irrational, but it just pops into your head when you get stressed and…and…I wish you couldn't hear all my thoughts, that's all. No offense, of course._

_ None taken. I'm trying not to eavesdrop on your mind, but that last thought was particularly strong, is all._

_ Eh…yeah…I understand, I guess._

"It's done!"

The crew rushed in to see Kururu's newest invention. At five minutes, this was one of his fastest builds, and he was proud of it. "Presenting…drum roll please!"

From the cold looks he was receiving, he realized at once that this wasn't the time. Quickly changing his tone, he masked his arrogant face with one of neutral seriousness. He grabbed a rather large looking remote control from his desk and spun around. Fuyuki stared intently at it, not blinking.

"What? Is there a smudge on the dial or something ku ku ku…?" Kururu laughed nervously as the boy's face got closer and closer to his precious new creation.

"Well, if this thing really is going to save an amped up Dark Momoka, I just thought it would, you know, look more…" Fuyuki trailed off.

"Impressive?" Tamama raised his hand and offered the finishing word.

There was a moment in which Kururu appeared to be choking on a large quantity of food. Suddenly, he burst out laughing. "I, KU KU KU, suppose that, KU KU, you were thinking I would make a huge-ass mech or something? Ku ku ku…there is no mech in the universe that has more potential than Dark Momoka." _Except for maybe Enraged Fuyuki._ Kururu kept that last part to himself. It would require more looking into after the crisis.

"Well, as you can see," butted in Keroro, slightly miffed at the lack of attention he had been receiving for the last few hours, "Dark Momoka isn't doing all that great out there. She's still on the radar, god knows how, but it won't be long until they get lucky…or she gets careless."

"Or both!" added Tamama which earned him a dry stare from Fuyuki.

"Exactly," said Kururu once Tamama had shut up, "She's a super soldier like no other, but she will tire. Whether it be in a day or a week, I don't know, but she ain't going anywhere with those lasers on her, and neither is the mother ship. This is where my invention comes in."

"How come you needed the model number? I don't see where that comes in at all," said Aki, her brow furrowed, "I want to know why you were torturing my son for it."

"He wasn't torturing me, Mom…" Fuyuki began, patting his mother on the shoulder, but the Sergeant Major cut him off.

"Oh, but that's really important too," said Kururu as if he were teaching a class, "I said the suit multiplies your strength by ten. Now that isn't quite right. It doesn't sound quite as cool if I say it multiplies your strength by 10.12, but that's what the 8427409966 model does. I must say I haven't really quite mastered power amplifying tech, trouble with the direct manipulation of the liquid energy. See, if air weren't matter, this whole process would be a cinch, but because I have to somehow create thousands of tiny vacuums, it takes time, and the STRX Fibers used to control the high levels of gamma radiation are hard to come by in this star system as the ion-"

"Can we um…maybe get on with it?" Natsumi was trying to be polite, but her blood pressure was beginning to rise.

Kururu blinked and paused for a moment before resuming. "Oh yeah…short of the matter is, I needed the suit's unique power multiplication factor to calibrate this invention."

"What does it do?"

The R&D specialist smiled to his audience. "Dark Momoka is pissed off, I'm sure. How do you make a scary girl even more scary?"

"Put a stupid frog in front of her who isn't talking fast enough?"

"Ku ku ku…WRONG! PMS is the answer!"

Fuyuki nearly doubled over. Was this the supposed genius's best idea?

"No worries," admonished Kururu seeing the look on Fuyuki's face, "I haven't created a ray to increase hormonal activity in Pekoponians. This is PMS: Power-multiplier-secondary, acronym unfortunate. I plugged in Momoka's suit's stats and with a crank of this dial, that ten times power will be remotely amplified to a hundred times."

The crew stepped back, aghast. That kind of strength would break intergalactic records.

"That's genius!" cried Keroro, determined to get some attention.

"That's genius, yeah," countered Giroro, "But really dangerous too. I'm sure that there is _some_ kind of risk to this."

Kururu nodded and began pacing around his lair. "Right as always, Corporal. There are some risks indeed with something I like to call a 'surge'."

"A what?"

"I'll cut to the chase," said Kururu, looking directly at Fuyuki, "Listen up because you'll be the one to operate the dial. Dark Momoka is strong, but her body is human. Best case scenario, you turn the dial and she gets stronger, kicks ass, and then we can lower the power before she destroys the entire universe. Bad case scenario, you turn up the dial and her body explodes. Worst case, you crank that shit and the body surges. The suit overloads and goes supernova creating a black hole and killing everyone in a ten million mile radius."

"T-that can happen?" asked Keroro. The crew traded looks of apprehension.

Except Fuyuki.

Walking over to the yellow frog, he picked up the remote from his hand and caressed the shining dial. Natsumi watched worriedly as Fuyuki stared as if entranced at his distorted reflection in the polished silver.

"There are power levels, you know. You can increase the power to 20 times, or to 30 times, and so forth up to 100. If you increase it to 20, she'll probably survive."

"Yeah, I got it. I know Momoka the best."

Natsumi grabbed Fuyuki's arm as he began to turn the dial. "Look, Fuyuki, I…I don't want to question your judgment, but are you sure you know what you're doing? You look so calm and this…this isn't a situation where I would be calm and you know me."

Giroro agreed silently. It was as if Fuyuki was an entirely new person. _Perhaps his determination grew him a backbone. I gotta hand it to him. I don't think I could keep cool either if I knew that Natsumi might explode before my eyes._

Fuyuki just smiled at the two of them and after a second, they returned the favor with determined grins but shaky eyes.

"One," said Fuyuki and he began to turn the dial, "Always keep your cool," the dial was up to 30X "Giroro…you showed me that," the dial was up to 50X, "success can only be achieved when," the dial was up to 70X. Kururu was sweating from the pressure as stared at the moving circle, "YOU BELIEVE IN YOUR FRIENDS!" he yelled and close his eyes as the dial clicked onto the 100X mark.

Dark Momoka was becoming board outside. Sure the lasers were fast, but she was able to memorize where they would come from by the cooling times. _**Then again, I guess I'm not going anywhere quick…not sure how much longer I can keep doing this.**_

__Suddenly, her wrists began to tingle. Then her head, then her neck, then her entire body began to feel like it was on fire. She arched her back and screamed, abandoning all acrobatic movements and taking several laser hits. It was searing pain. Pain beyond anything she had ever experienced. _**Pain to match my power**_ she thought grimly as her vision dimmed. It soon proved to be much more powerful than her though, and wouldn't let her black out.

She couldn't see because of her suit, but she wouldn't have been surprised if her physical body actually was burning. Her eyes were zooming in and out of focus, her tongue felt heavy and fuzzy in her mouth. The head…oh how it POUNDED and beat like a rampaging rhinoceros against her skull. Her arm and leg muscles wouldn't respond to commands, jerking this way and that way, her ears rang with implacable discord and she tried to cover them but when she told her hand to move up it went down. Her voice was shot now; throat a horrid red, blood streaming from her nose and ears and eyes. But the heart! What a ghastly melody it was playing! A fast beat that caused her mind to go crazy with pleasure only to have it swing to into suicidal depression at the next moment. She was taking hundreds of laser hits now, but it felt like mere pinpricks to the exquisite pain that ravished and raked every bone, every muscle, every nerve, every cell in her body.

She screamed out once more and her mind exploded and it was over.

Dark Momoka felt herself. With the suit in the way, she couldn't actually touch the flesh, but she was fine with that. She figured the suit was the only thing keeping her body from falling apart into little chunks.

She had felt her mind explode. Felt her MIND EXPLODE! But she was still alive. How? She didn't know, and frankly, she didn't much care. The laser pinpricks were gone now. Why? Another unanswered question to add to the growing list.

Gingerly, Dark Momoka began searching for answers in the only place she could: in her own mind. The worry was unfounded, as she quickly discovered that she could reason. The brain was intact, at least, but what about the rest of her? She found she was breathing, so the heart was alright, but to know for sure, she had to open her eyes.

The memory of blood rushing through her tear ducts gave her shivers, but she grit her teeth and opened them.

She was in space. The lasers…they were still hitting her…or not. She didn't feel them. It was only then that she realized what was happening. A new natural function had been created in her. As easy as it was to breathe without thinking, her body put up a mental barrier that blocked all incoming shots.

With that discovery, power like nothing she had ever felt before surged through every pore of her body. _**If that pain…was…for THIS…then it was worth every second!**_

Rising up, she found that she could move with the power of her mind as well, and it put on no strain. Smiling, Dark Momoka raised her hand and saluted the K66 Cruiser in the distance. Whatever they had done, it had worked.

Her grin turned into a full blown laugh as she sent an incoming scout to hell with a flick of her wrist. Then, the full weight of it hit her. "**Mother ship,**" she called out to nobody, "**Up to now, you've been calling the shots around here. You're powerful, I'll give you that, and your lasers are quite annoying. But this game ends here.**"

Savoring her victory, she extended her consciousness Dororo style and engulfed the steering deck of the mother ship. She felt three crew members' minds before finding the captain.

_**Who or what are you?**_ She asked him telepathically and took great amusement in the surprise and fear that gripped his mind for the moment.

_Who or what are you who got through our thought barriers? Telepathy should be blocked by our shields!_

_**Ah you speak my language. Excellent. Now answer my question.**_

___You should talk with more respect toward a superior race. We don't "speak" your puny, insignificant language. I'm merely using a translator. Now answer MY question. How did you get through the barrier?_

_**I'm puny? That's funny! If you're the superior race, you should be able to use this mental link to telepathically kill me. Do it!**_

___Impossible. Telepathy doesn't work like that. Why are you contacting me, you ignorant fool! Let me speak to your commanding officer at once!_

_**Telepathy doesn't work like that! HA! **_Dark Momoka withdrew from the Captain's head and slipped into the minds of his two navigators. With just a twitch of her mind, their heads exploded, splattering blood and body parts all over the walls. By mentally hijacking the eyes of the pilot, she surveyed the carnage with light amusement. When she could see no more from the pilot's chair, she had him pick up a gun and shoot himself in the head.

Slipping seamlessly back into the mind of the captain, she continued. _**So…feel like answering MY questions first now?**_

___We…we are Radians. A superior race to you- _The captain's head separated from his body and dropped on the floor.

**"I'M SICK OF YOUR SUPERIORITY BULLSHIT!" ** Dark Momoka screamed over the mother ship intercom she mentally took control of, **"HOW ARE **_**YOU**_** STRONGER WHEN ALL YOU CAN DO IS FIRE LASERS AT ME AND I CAN CRUSH YOU WITH THE POWER OF MY MIND!?"**

The crew on the K66 Cruiser watched in flabbergasted silence as the mother ship turned completely over. By using optics, Kururu zoomed in on Momoka. "The strongest super soldier ever created…and I did it!" a single tear rolled down his cheek.

The Pekoponians glanced down at Kururu's tear and looked away. Somehow, they felt as if they were interrupting a private moment.

_I guess even Kururu is overcome by emotions sometimes_. Natsumi smiled to herself.

Kururu sneakily put the eye drops back into his hidden pocket and smirked as Momoka used her powers to pry off the bottom of the mother ship as if it was a large can of sardines. Ships poured out of every docking bay, but they never got far before they simply melted into slag.

Dark Momoka wished that space wasn't silent. The screams: they must have been quite delicious. Licking her lips at the thought, she pointed at a large battle cruiser trying to retreat and it caught on fire, tumbling through empty space before colliding with a scout and exploding.

A beat in her heart made her suddenly shiver. Looking around, space was still in chaos, the mother ship was destroyed, and the battle was won, but she felt uneasy. The pumping in her heart grew more and more.

Dark thoughts entered her mind as the pain began to return. _**Did I overdo it? Yes…I know that's the reason in my soul. This power is amazing, tantalizing, irresistible, but I must resist it. If I don't…I'm going… to die.**_

__Driving hard into her mind, Dark Momoka fumbled in the dark for the small pocket of energy that was fueling her metamorphosis. It wasn't long until a glimmer of light caught her eye. Stumbling forward, she pictured herself grasping the light and felt the infinite power. Panicking she felt its tendrils grab her. She had to get rid of it, but how! It didn't matter how many ships she destroyed. How would that deplete infinity? How?

Then she knew.

Fuyuki watched in amazement as the mother ship just disappeared. Giroro backed up a few paces and swore loudly. "I've seen some crazy stuff today, but this takes it. How the hell did she do that?"

There was a general muttering of hypothesis, but Kururu's reaction topped them all. Real tears drenched his face this time. "She did it…" he whispered to the air, "She figured it out."

A loud knocking came from the outside minutes later and Kururu pulled the airlock open in a hurry. An exhausting looking Momoka stumbled in and Fuyuki gasped with joy. He quickly disassembled her suit and kissed her lips, closing the gap between them in a tight embrace.

"**Hey! Stupid boy! Get off me! Release me!**" but she said it without conviction, an obvious blush gracing her face.

"That's right!" muttered Tamama to Keroro, "Dark Momoka loves Fuyuki too. That'll always keep the two souls together."

Fuyuki stared gently into Momoka's eyes as he pulled away from his kiss and grinned. Dark Momoka smiled back weakly and let go, falling into a deep sleep. Knowing in his heart that she would wake up in due time, Fuyuki covered her with a blanket. The tips of her hair softened as goodie-goodie Momoka slipped back into her body as well and fell asleep.

As Aki piloted the Cruiser through the Radians' atmosphere hours later, Kururu paced back and forth in his R&D lab. "That was a good one," he said to himself, "Destroying matter!"

"Momoka destroyed matter?" it was Fuyuki at the door to the lair, "I thought that was supposed to be impossible!"

"It is," replied Kururu, "But doing the impossible is the only way to get rid of infinite energy, you must understand. It is the paradox to top them all. That's how the ship disappeared by the way. She destroyed its matter. She didn't change the state; she didn't turn it into energy. It's just gone!" Kururu paced around his lab and whimsically stroked his chin. Fuyuki couldn't help but grin. It was the happiest he had seen everyone in a long time. Momoka was safe, their passage to the planet was assured, and Koyuki's plan to revive Dororo was about to begin.

**Whew…that was one long chapter for me.**


	8. The Surface

**Note: As you've probably guessed, the main reason that I made the last chapter so long is because I knew that I wouldn't have time to write for awhile after. Thank you for continuing to be patient, good readers.**

**Chapter 8: The Surface**

Sergeant Major Kururu lay back in his chair. His legs were crossed defensively and a dark scowl had banished his usual condescending smirk to the void. Not only his platoon mates, but the Pekoponians too! It was almost unbearable to think about.

"Why did I cry?" Kururu yelled aloud, banging the keyboard in front of him, "That is so…so…UNCOOL!" His fit over, he let his slim body slide down the length of the smooth chair until his knees touched the ground. It might have not been so bad if it was Giroro or Dororo, but Tamama and Keroro were sure to make certain that he would never hear the end of it. Kururu sighed dejectedly. Then there was Fuyuki. Sure he was weak, uncoordinated, and not altogether brilliant, but even Kururu had to admit that he had stellar emotional control. Even when the chips were stacked against him and the girl he cared about most, he moved with conviction. Sure Fuyuki had faltered a bit when it looked like Momoka might die in space, but when it came time to power up her suit…

"I probably wouldn't have had the guts to turn that dial all the way up, and I built the damn thing."

That realization shook Kururu, and he smiled thinly.

"I can talk big and deliver on my promises, but once I leave the R&D lab, that's where my strengths end. Then again, according to my job description, my strengths are only supposed to be in the labs. I suppose I've been overextending my role a little."

Kururu giggled as his words boosted his own ego.

Koyuki slammed a fat tome shut and grabbed for another, a fiery look of determination etched on her face. Natsumi ambled down from her seat in the turret to look at her good friend incredulously.

"You're still working on that? I think I've heard you slam like 10,000 books shut by now. What're you looking for anyway?"

Koyuki looked up, and Natsumi took a step back. Though Koyuki often concentrated intensely on difficult tasks, she hardly ever became annoyed. This was one of those blue moon times.

"I'm trying to find the proper ritual for returning Dororo's soul to his body. Now if you don't mind, Natsumi…"

"Yeah, OK. I'm backing up now!" Natsumi walked quickly back up to her seat in the turret room. Sitting down, she sighed and fiddled with the joystick on her control panel. It was dangerous to argue with Koyuki when she was that determined. "I suppose I am best friends with a girl who was brought up to kill. I should be used this kind of thing."

Meanwhile in the navigation room, Aki was relaxing. The difficult piloting was over now that the mothership had been destroyed, and the only thing left to do was to dock on the surface. Best part was, that the ship did that automatically which left Aki free to explore the different components of the alien ship. By pressing one button, the ship dispensed lemonade in a little cup. Grinning excitedly, she pushed the button again and then quickly hit a smaller red one on the left. She was pleasantly surprised when her cup filled with orange juice.

"Are you quite finished?" asked Keroro, pacing back and forth, "This ship isn't a toy, you know. It's a fully armed military fighter, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't-"

"You know, Kero-chan? Would you mind giving me a grand tour of this ship once we're back on Earth? An aspiring artist with incredible talent has just submitted a manuscript, but his alien spacecraft idea is just so lackluster in the imagination department. I want to help him out, and I think getting to know a real alien craft might help."

"KERO KERO KERO! Will you make it worth my while?"

Tamama's ears perked up from across the room. _The Sarge is going into his super negotiator mode. He made some pretty slick deals with the worst of space scum back in the old days!_

"Umm…let me think…" muttered Aki, "I got it! I'll give you a week of chores off."

"WHOA! DEAL!"

Tamama flipped over his chair and smacked his head on the ground. _I thought he was going to bargain for the Pekopon invasion or something. Not the friggin chores…_

With a roar, the K66 Cruiser crashed through the Radian atmosphere.

"With their radar technology, camouflage will be next to useless!" cried Giroro from one of the turret rooms, "Just OPEN FIRE!"

"ROGER!"

A hail of energy burst from the ship, bathing the ground below in a radioactive glow. Thanks to Momoka, the energy stores for the ship's twin lasers were nearly full. They had not fired very many blasts during the fight in space.

"I'm sure they think that we've used up most of our shots while fighting their main forces…" crowed Keroro, "Well we're about to prove just how weak they really are! Forward! FORWARD!"

"FOR EARTH!" yelled Natsumi.

"FOR KERON!" yelled Giroro.

With deft, Aki swung around the K66 Cruiser to avoid a collision with the surface. Using the ship's forward momentum, she shoved the thrusters down right, causing it to nearly flip over in mid air. A rocket whizzed by.

"Phew! Nice flying," said Tamama, suiting up in a space suit, "but even you won't be able to dodge forever." Keroro slammed the exit button and the back hatch of the ship eased open with a hiss. Kururu was on standby with the emergency oxygen regulators, but it took only a moment to confirm that the air on the surface was made of a similar compound to Earth's.

With a war cry, Tamama jumped from the back and fell several stories to the ground. He was angry. More furious than he had ever been.

Two hours before:

"YOU WANT ME TO DO WHAT?"

"Oh, c'mon, Private. You'd look so cool."

"I dunno, man. Jumping into a hostile world full of aliens with highly advanced weaponry…that does sound cool, but you know what isn't cool? How about DYING HORRIBLY! THAT SHIT ISN'T COOL!"

The Sergeant Major stroked his chin thoughtfully. "I've already gone over the plan with our leader. He thought it was wonderful! Ku ku ku…"

"Oh wow. You tricked the Sarge. He may be clueless sometimes but I know for sure that he isn't THAT STUPID!"

Kururu held up his right hand. The other he used to massage his temples in a "delicate genius" sort of fashion.

"You won't be doing this by yourself, you know."

Tamama perked up. Was he going with Giroro? That would definitely improve the odds of survival. "I thought the Corporal's role was to fire one of the lasers?"

"It is. Your little helper won't be the mighty weapon's expert. It will be…ku ku ku ku ku…"

Present Time:

Tamama hit the ground with a crunch and shattered all the bones in his legs. He winced on instinct, but before he could even feel any real pain, his body was completely whole again. Flipping the safety tip off of a syringe, Tamama injected himself in the arm. "One injection every 10 minutes…man the crazy stuff the Sergeant Major thinks up…"

With a scream, Tamama sprinted toward a creature that looked like nothing he had ever seen. It was very tall. He estimated at least twice that of a normal Pekoponian adult male. Covered in thick black armor, it looked like an impenetrable fortress. The head of the creature would have been a sight to behold if it had not been shrouded in a red hood, and in its hands were two colossal missile launchers.

The first shot missed Tamama who was accelerating with every step, but the second one managed to clip him on the arm. It exploded in a burst of red, but reformed almost instantly. Tamama smirked with satisfaction as he jumped onto the surprised Radian and unleashed a close range Tamama Impact which dissolved half his body.

Three more soldiers turned around to face the new menace, swapping their launchers for wicked looking curved blades pulsing with electricity. The Private nearly laughed out loud at the feeble attempt to intimidate. Pulling out a large dagger, he opened with a flurry of stabs causing green blood to pour out of the Radian's armor. Tamama's right leg as well as his left arm was cleaved off but it mattered not.

With the appearance of an even greater menace, the Radian forces were divided. Natsumi and Giroro rained hell from above, but the soldiers on the ground were reluctant to focus on them with such a deadly assassin within striking distance.

The Radian's dilemma was over with the approach of their armored battle machines. Resembling Pekoponian tanks with spider legs, they were heavily armored and boasted a main cannon equivalent in power to the ones used on space cruisers. Natsumi fired down on it, but the armor from the top was too strong.

"These machines," thought Tamama, "have all their armor on the top since they're meant to take out cruisers. If I can get under it…"

Suddenly, the full weight of his power hit him. He was invincible. He could get nuked and come out just fine. A wretched smile spread smoothly over his face. This was going to be fun.

Running full tilt, Tamama somersaulted over a Radian's head, grabbing his explosive belt and his head while in the turn. The belt snapped away from the creature's waist and the beheaded soldier tumbled to the ground. Dashing forward, the Private slid under the spider tank and pushed the engage button on the belt.

A second past, but Tamama's will was strong and he didn't even wince.

The tank exploded, sending a couple Radians tumbling for cover. Tamama's blood flew for miles before turning around and completely reforming again. Grabbing a syringe from where he had placed it by a Radian corpse, he injected himself again, feeling the unholy strength pour once more through his body.

Over the next few minutes, the Private changed from a solid being to a pool of red liquid and back again more times than Super Meat Boy, but the grin of superiority never left his face. By the time he had run out of syringes, the Radians had run out of forces. Though it was sure to be only a microscopic bit of what they would face on the hostile surface, the team celebrated their small victory and managed to touch down safely. Tamama, coming down from his invincible high, struggled to remain standing. As Keroro rushed forward with the stretcher, he tumbled to the side.

"I did well, didn't I Sarge…" muttered Tamama, gazing into his hero's eyes, "Didn't I?"

"You did. That was some impressive fighting out there, soldier!"

With a real smile now, a smile of joy, Tamama passed out.

There was a moment of silence as the humans and Keronians alike stared toward the massive Radian city straight ahead of them. Already they could hear the hum of an approaching army.

"It's hard to believe that we're actually here…" muttered Fuyuki, clutching Momoka's hand, "It seems not too long ago that I discovered the Sarge hiding in my room with the Keroball."

"What's even more surprising is how that cute little frog sleeping there," Natsumi motioned to Tamama, "could have painted our entire landing strip red, literally."

A rusty chuckle emanated from the group, but nobody was laughing on the inside. The hardest trials were yet to come.


	9. Bloodbath

**Chapter 9: Bloodbath**

Long shadows fell across the K66 Cruiser. An army of thousands crouched on one side. A group of eight stood proudly on the other. Fuyuki and Momoka stood together, hands clasped and eyes determinedly forward. Aki slid on a helmet, flicking the visor down. She positioned herself in a relaxed pose on her motorcycle. Koyuki was bent over in a complicated ninja pose while holding a very old book. Keroro laughed to himself as shined the keroball with a small rag while Tamama, awake once again, breathed in heavily clutching a fresh bag of syringes. Kururu tightened the last screws on his airborne transport vehicle and Giroro polished his weapons. The air was tense and silent.

"Surrender and your deaths will be quick!" the shout came from a Radian herald who had walked halfway across the ground destined to be stained with even more blood.

Keroro's laughter became even more pronounced than before, "Kero kero kero…Who do you think we are anyway?"

"Your army is strong. However, you have just seen a fraction of our strength." The herald, caught up in his pride walked the rest of the way and stood one foot away from the Sergeant. "I would surrender now. We WILL torture you for what you did to the Royal Radian Fleet if you choose to fight."

"Screw you. You messed with the wrong two planets."

"You refuse our generous request? Such lack of manners I've never seen!" In his fury, the herald leapt for Keroro's throat.

"You know, I figured the roll of the herald was to find a peaceful resolution," commented Keroro as the Radian was swept instantly into a headlock by Tamama. "Nevertheless, let him go. I'm not a cold blooded killer."

Grim with anticipation, the eight watched in stoic silence as the startled herald angrily ran back to his comrades, gingerly touching his throat.

Koyuki glanced down at her book and gulped. _I'm only going to have one shot at this. Dororo…give me strength._ Shouting was heard and a banner rose high into the air. The battle had begun.

Sprinting forward with lightning speed, Koyuki quickly put some distance between herself and her teammates. Ducking low, she dodged the first volley of laser fire and positioned herself beneath one of the front line soldiers. Gasping in surprise, the Radian could only look down in shock as Koyuki's sword went through his neck. Spinning around, she cleaved the two standing near him and jumped back behind a rock just as the second round of shots peppered the ground she had stood on not a second ago.

_ A ninja tries to subvert confrontation. To assassinate, gather intelligence, or to protect from the shadows, the ninja works in secret. However, when forced to fight, the true nature of the masked warrior emerges. If such a warrior is to give up his soul for another, the only way to regain life is to have a partner so devoted as to be the first to enter battle. The blood of the first to die in a battle, stained on the blade that struck the blow, mixed with the life essence of the partner, is the only thing that can reinvigorate the soul. The incantation for soul revival is as follows:_

Crouched behind the rock, Koyuki placed her sword on the ground and began muttering the words inscribed in her book. Her teeth clenched as an uneasy presence began surrounding her.

Momoka and Fuyuki met with the swell of Radian soldiers in a matter of seconds. As Momoka and her Dark side melded into one once again, Fuyuki picked off stragglers in the back with his K66 issued laser gun. At first, Momoka's face was full of rage and confidence, but as the hours dragged by, her smirk slowly changed into an expression of angry determination. The light in the sky changed positions many times, but the Radians never stopped coming.

Keroro, on the other side of the field, who was running low on power for the Kero Ball, called out to Tamama. "I need to go pick up a spare battery! Hold the line!"

"Y-yes sir," came the feeble response. Looking over in shock, he saw with a growing horror that Tamama had run out of syringes. His left eye was bloody and he had bruises all over his body. Snarling, Keroro threw the Kero Ball on the ground and jumped into the fray himself.

Giroro fired his rocket launcher at the ground twenty feet away. The explosion sent a mass of Radians flying into the air, but before the smoke had time to clear, even more soldiers had taken their places. Giroro felt the unusual lightness in his weapons pack and grabbed his two empty pistols by the barrels. Uttering a mighty battle cry, he charged at the incoming soldiers, breaking bones in a spinning whirl of steel.

Somewhere off in the distance, Kururu dropped out of the sky. Crashing in a heap on the ground, he could only watch in horror as the swell of Radian soldiers closed in on him. _Tch…I really should have been watching the fuel gauge on the transport…but I didn't expect the fight to drag on so long._

Just as he was about to get smothered in a wave of bodies, Aki's motorcycle crashed through them, just barely clearing Kururu's head. Brushing himself off, the Sergeant Major stood up.

"I hate to say it, but thanks, Pekoponian."

"No problem, but my ride is totaled. We're going to have to fight on foot from here on out."

Already, the swells of Radians had replenished, and were slowly moving in around the two. Aki raised her fists and adopted a battle stance and Kururu tapped his headphones, raising two antennas. For a moment, everything was still. The noise of killing seemed to zoom in and out as the wind fluctuated. Then it was over. Lunging quickly to her right, Aki landed a right hook on the Radian who had grabbed her shoulder, as Kururu on the opposite side of her, unleashed the sonic pulse from the antenna which forced the Radians backward. _I wonder how long we can hold out? Ku ku ku…_

"**I'VE KILLED ABOUT A BILLION BY NOW!" **yelled Momoka, "**WHY DON'T THEY EVER STOP?"**

A day had definitely gone by, and the eight could hardly stand. Koyuki, who had finished the spell hours ago, had not had time to go back and check to see if it had worked. She could barely even move an inch. No matter how many she slashed, there was always another one behind her. It was a ninja's nightmare.

Fuyuki and Momoka, who had been pushing forward for the past few hours, were on the verge of collapse. Fuyuki's fingers were covered in blisters, and he was limping from a deep gash in his right leg. Momoka was far worse off, with little cuts and scrapes covering nearly the entirety of her body. Just when they were about to give up, the crowd of leering Radians broke open and the two stumbled into a clearing. Shocked, they looked around at the rest of their team.

"I guess those bastards funneled us all to this one spot," said Keroro, grabbing the two by their hands and dragging them away from the incoming Radians, "but I'm not sure we can hold them off for much longer, even with your guys help."

Looking around, Fuyuki noticed that none of his teammates had weapons anymore. Their well stocked armory had been slowly whittled down to nothing but bare fists. Momoka quickly rejoined the fight, pushing back a wave of Radians with a flurry of punches, but the young boy couldn't move. He dropped to his knees, nearly screaming as dust entered his cuts. This was too much. Their army was just too large.

Watching dimly from the ground, he watched the Radians as they mindlessly surged forward. They didn't have weapons either, he noted, but their numbers made up for it.

_Wait a minute…_

Fuyuki's eyes suddenly grew wide. Where were the bodies? They had killed so many Radians that the body count would litter the ground. _They move in so fast over their dead that we never see the corpses! _Fuyuki watched closely this time as Tamama ripped a Radian in half. The body fell…and disappeared!

"WE'RE NOT FIGHTING AN ARMY!" cried Fuyuki, "WE'RE FIGHTING ONLY A FEW RADIANS! THESE MASSES! THEY'RE ILLUSIONS!"

Momoka looked down for a second, "**HOW CAN THEY BE ILLUSIONS! THEY'VE BEEN HURTING US!**"

"Okay…maybe not illusions, but…um…puppets or something. I mean, LOOK! They blunder forward with no self preservation, and when they die, they disappear!"

On the other side of the circle, Giroro's eyes narrowed. What Fuyuki said made sense, but it was of little consequence with the puppets moving ever closer.

Struggling to his feet, Fuyuki tried to get a better vantage point. He had to find the Puppeteer. _Close by…close by…he has to be close by. I gotta…find the one who isn't acting like all the others…_

The boy was yanked up by the back of his shirt. Even without turning around, he could tell it wasn't one of his friends. As time slowed down, he saw Natsumi scream and run toward him just as a Radian snuck behind and blindsided Aki with its elbow. As he was lifted higher in the air, he saw his friends slowly being enveloped in a cloud of bodies. Fuyuki closed his eyes. It was over.

ASSASSIN MAGIC! BLOOMING FLOWER!

The boy's eyes snapped open again. He felt himself tumble to the ground as a current of wind swept through the entire battlefield. Radian Puppets on all sides were pushed back hundreds of feet as Dororo landed gracefully on the battlefield.

Koyuki looked up in wonder, tears brimming on the corners of her eyes. She couldn't say anything, but Dororo understood. "I'm proud of you, Koyuki. You've proven yourself not only a master assassin, but a true friend."

The girl nodded, her beaming face making her look more like a school girl than a ninja. She vigorously nodded her head, gripping Dororo's hand tightly.

"Now, get up. We must fight."

With Dororo amongst them, the eight became nine, and moral rose. As the puppets swarmed in to fill the space, Dororo gracefully waltzed from one side of the circle to the other, cleaving thousands in minutes.

Sitting atop Aki's shoulders, Fuyuki surveyed the landscape. Puppets for miles pushed in towards the nine from every angle. Scanning the heads, he desperately tried to pick out the one that was moving differently.

Suddenly, he saw it. A Radian that was moving in a direction diagonal to the flow of the puppets. Fuyuki signaled to Aki, who launched Momoka into the air with one arm. Executing a perfect summersault midflight, the girl spotted her target in slid a dagger out of her side pocket. It came down with a sharp jab on the Radian's head.

Everything stopped moving. Then, all at once, the puppets all dropped to the ground and crumbled away into dust. A fountain of blood burst from the one real Radian. Leaping away, Momoka readied herself for another fight, but it was over. The corpse lay quietly on the ground.

The nine collapsed on the ground as the dust began to settle. An eerie silence enveloped the empty battlefield.

"I don't see any life for miles…" commented Natsumi, weakly.

"They probably didn't expect we'd even make it this far," replied Keroro, fanning himself with one hand, "but we did, and we're not stopping here.


End file.
